The weird thing

The last few days I’ve been working at trying to understand and articulate where the discouragement is coming from here at work. Why do good developers keep leaving? Well, because they find brighter-looking alternatives. Ok, but why aren’t we the brighter opportunity? Why do people feel they have to leave to pursue that opportunity?

Perhaps the other company only looks better (when really it has the same issues)? Or maybe they’re just discontented people?

I don’t buy it.

Programmers I admire and respect are getting discouraged and leaving the company for reasons I bet they can’t always completely articulate, and I haven’t been able to clearly articulate the nature of my discouragement either. So I’m trying to figure it out. In the movies it’s always easier to fight the invisible monster once you figure out a way to make it un-invisible. That is what I’m trying to do.

So anyway, the weird thing is, I’m spending all this time thinking about this issue and yet I’m not falling behind on my regularly assigned work. In fact, now that my mind is going on this peopleware-type stuff, I think I’m actually getting more done on my regular work than when I was merely discouraged and trying to stick to just doing my job! I guess this is not a zero-sum game.

One more weird thing: It’s kind of odd to be applying problem-solving skills that I’m used to only applying to software, to people issues. It’s also kind of cool though.

Will I be part of effecting an important change at my company, or be fired? (Maybe everyone who ever tries something big wonders that.)